


For Want of a Kiss

by Valerie_Vancollie



Category: Numb3rs (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Brother-Brother Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon Het Relationship, Canon Universe, Claiming, Claiming Bites, Domestic, Drama, Drama & Romance, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Implied Slash, Light Angst, LiveJournal, M/M, Mathematicians, Mathematics, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Parent-Child Relationship, Possessive Behavior, Propositions, Relationship(s), Romance, Schmoop, Series, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-02-10 00:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18649165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valerie_Vancollie/pseuds/Valerie_Vancollie
Summary: While waiting for his father and brother, Don gets an offer from a stranger. An offer that catches his family and girlfriend off-guard.





	1. Siberian Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old fic being posted here for the first time now that I have an AO3 account. Unlike for my other fic, my original site for this fandom still exists and is [3695](https://valeriev84.livejournal.com).
> 
>  **Time:** later  
>  **Spoilers:** _Identity Crisis_  
>  **Note:** This is actually a series of 4 fics which I've posted together here for ease of reading & posting. I started writing _Siberian Kiss_ almost as soon as I got the idea and, even before I finished it, the bunny for _Marked by a Kiss_ came to me. So this was destined to be a series nearly right away as the idea for _Kiss & Tell_ wasn't far behind and then the late [ALEO](https://aleo-70.livejournal.com/) triggered the idea for _Quantifying a Kiss_ when she betad _Siberian Kiss_ for me.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

It took Don's overtired mind a minute to realize that the man who'd joined him at the bar had been talking to him.

"Huh?" Don said, facing the tall man who was giving him a friendly smile. "Sorry, were you talking to me?"

"Yes," the man confirmed, his smile growing. "I asked if I could buy you a drink."

"If you could buy me a drink?" Don repeated, lost as he glanced at his nearly empty beer glass.

Did he know this man from somewhere? He didn't recognize him, but why else would he offer to buy him a drink? _Oh_.

"Uh, no, that's okay, I'm fine," Don stated, eyes widening involuntarily as his brain put the pieces together. "I'm waiting for others and shouldn't drink anymore before dinner."

"Oh, I'm sorry, you just looked like you could use some company," the man explained, wariness entering his eyes as he realized how badly he'd misjudged the situation.

"That's alright," Don replied, hoping to put the man at ease.

Although infrequent, this wasn't the first time he'd been hit on by another guy. His slight shifting on the barstool, however, caused his coat to fall open more, revealing his gun. The man's eyes widened and fear entered them as he swallowed and quickly got to his feet. Don had worked enough hate crimes to have a pretty good idea of what the man was thinking right about now.

"FBI," Don explained calmly, not sure if that was going to help the situation much as relations between LEOs and the gay community weren't exactly known to be peaceful most of the time.

The man, however, seemed to calm somewhat and studied his face closely for a second before nodding.

"Sorry," he stated again.

"No harm done," Don responded. "And I'm not so biased as to take it as anything other than a compliment."

"Good," the man said before he walked away.

Don turned back towards the bar and noticed two things simultaneously. The first was the bartender visibly relaxing where he'd clearly overheard some, if not all, of the exchange and the second was his father and brother approaching.

"Sorry we're late," Alan said. "I had to drag your brother out of the garage."

"I was busy on an important development!" Charlie protested though his eyes were tracking something over Don's shoulder and he had a sinking feeling it was the man who'd just hit on him. "Friend of yours? He can join us if you want."

"No, no," Don said quickly, perhaps too quickly if his father's look was anything to go by, as he finished off his beer and stood up. "No one I know."

"They why were you talking to him?" Alan inquired, frowning as he tried to figure out what his eldest was hiding from them.

"It's nothing," Don replied, wondering why he suddenly felt like a teenager again. "He just offered me a drink is all."

"Why?" Charlie asked, confused. "I mean, if you don't know him."

Don opened his mouth to brush off the entire incident when his father's sudden intake of breath told him it was already too late.

"Was he... _flirting_ with you?" Alan questioned, caught completely off-guard by the sudden revelation.

"Yeah," Don admitted softly, knowing there was no point in denying it.

"Flirting?" Charlie questioned, stunned. "But you're... he's..."

"Has this happened before?" Alan asked.

"Occasionally," Don shrugged uncomfortably. "It's not a big deal."

"Define occasionally," Charlie prompted, looking at him like he'd never seen him before.

"No, we're not going into this," Don countered. "They flirt or ask, I say no, and that's it. End of story."

"But-"

"I don't think your brother wants to talk about it," Alan interrupted. "Besides, we're going to lose our table if we don't hurry."

Don sent his father a grateful look, though the older man's thoughtful expression made him think he'd not heard the last of this yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 2009


	2. Marked by a Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin has learned of what happened at the bar and decides to take matters into her own hands.

"So," Robin began, drawing Don's attention away from the book he was reading and down to where she lay with her head pillowed on his stomach.

When she'd first joined him in bed earlier, she'd mock-complained about the fact that he'd stolen her pillow to prop himself up, before settling in against him with the magazine she was reading. Now the magazine lay discarded on the rumpled sheets beside her legs just where her short red nightgown ended.

"Yes?" Don prompted, untangling his hand from her hair so he could put the bookmark in his book and set it aside.

"Your brother told me something interesting today," Robin stated as she half turned to face him, careful not to elbow him in the stomach as she did so.

"Really?" Don questioned, raising an inquiring eyebrow as he rested his right hand on her knee, caressing the skin with his thumb.

"Yes, something about a certain incident last Friday evening."

It took Don a second to realize what she was talking about, but when he did, he groaned and dropped his head back onto the pillows.

"I'm going to kill him," Don declared, not believing Charlie was telling people about that. "Slowly and painfully."

"So, not only do I need to worry about other women, but about certain men as well," Robin teased, though with a hint of steel that caused Don's eyes to snap open as he lifted his head to look at her.

His mouth went dry at the expression on her face. He didn't see it often, but Robin got the same look every time she decided to take charge in the bedroom. His body responded instantly, even before she moved to straddle his waist, her silken nightgown tickling him as it brushed the bare skin just above his boxers. His hands automatically come up to rest on her hip and leg, but he refrained from exploring any further, letting her control what came next.

Robin gave him a predatory smile as she leaned forward, placing a hand on his chest right over his heart, spreading her fingers wide.

"Mine," she growled possessively.

Don moaned and let his head fall back once more, exposing his throat which she instantly attacked with her lips and teeth. His hands tightened on her at the rough treatment, knowing he'd have marks the following morning, but not caring in the slightest. If he'd known she'd react like this, he would have told her himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 2009


	3. Kiss & Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alan has questions for his eldest about the incident and Don's response to it.

"Thanks," Alan said as his son brought in the last dishes from the dining room and grabbed a towel to start drying those he'd already washed.

"No problem," Don replied. "Makes me feel less guilty about eating here so often."

"You know you're always welcome, right?"

"Yeah, still feel I should pitch in sometimes."

"What I wouldn't have given for that attitude twenty years ago," Alan teased.

"Hey, better late than never, right?"

"I suppose."

"I can always stop if it's a problem."

"Oh, funny man," Alan retorted as he put the pan on the rack and frowned as he caught the edge of a bruise peaking out from under the collar of his son's shirt.

He'd missed it earlier as Don had still been wearing his tie, but he'd taken it off just before dinner and that allowed the collar to open a little wider. Concerned, he reached forwards for a better look, wondering if his eldest was hiding another injury from him and Charlie.

"What's this?"

"Dad!" Don exclaimed, twisting away quickly, but not before his father had seen exactly what it was.

"Oh, sorry," Alan apologized, embarrassed as he realized it was a love bite and not something more serious.

"You got water on me," Don complained, not wanting to discuss the marks Robin had left with his father.

"I only caught the edge of it and thought you'd gotten hurt."

"Ah, no, nothing like that."

"Yeah, I got that," Alan stated, a teasing note entering his voice as he watched his eldest squirm. Don _never_ squirmed. "Had fun?"

"Dad!"

"Just asking, there are a few."

"Yeah, well, Robin," Don began before deciding to switch gears. "Charlie told her about that guy at the bar last week."

"Ah," Alan said, taking pity on his son and turning his focus back to the dishes. "About that."

"Oh, not you too! Charlie's still trying to ask me questions about it."

"Well, you have to admit it's a bit unusual."

"No, it's not. I don't see why you guys are so fascinated with it."

"It caught us off-guard and we're just surprised."

"What, you don't think I'd look good to another guy?"

"That's not what I meant," Alan replied, throwing a glare at his son. "I'd just never considered a guy could be looking."

Don sighed in defeat, knowing he wasn't getting out of this. "Fine, what do you want to know?"

"You said it wasn't the first time?"

"No."

"When?"

"When what? The first time?"

"Yeah."

"It was in college, at one of the big frat parties I went to."

"Just like that?"

"He was young and naïve," Don shrugged. "I think he'd been sheltered most of his life and didn't realize the potential danger."

"I see."

"You want the whole list?"

"No," Alan replied, well aware of the sarcasm in the question. "I just... It's a bit of a paradigm shift for me."

"Only in how other people see me, nothing else," Don stated. "Nothing has really changed as far as I'm concerned. I'm still as straight as ever."

"It never, well, you know?"

"Made me wonder? Consider it?" Don queried, pleased his father was now the uncomfortable one.

"Yeah."

"No, not really. I mean it made me pause the first time, I'd never given any thought to how other guys saw me, well at least not in that sense anyway. But did it make me consider it? No."

"Okay."

"Can we change the subject now?" Don questioned hopefully.

"Sure," Alan agreed, smiling. "So, Robin felt the need to mark her territory, did she?"

"Dad!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 25 May 2009


	4. Quantifying a Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don discovers that Charlie has tried to use math to find the answers to his questions about the encounter.

"Charlie?" Don called out as he entered his childhood home.

When no one responded, Don walked straight through the dining room and stepped into the kitchen, headed for the back door. He knew his father had a class at the moment and since his brother's car was in the driveway that left only one place for him to be if he wasn't in the house. His deduction was proven correct when he found his errant brother in the garage, headphones on and his head bobbing away as his hand raced across the blackboard, equations spilling out of his mind.

Don took a moment to simply watch Charlie before his eyes wandered around the rest of the garage. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he caught sight of the equations on the last blackboard. Although the math involved was well over his head, he didn't need to be genius to know what his brother was trying to figure out. Not with his own name in the upper right corner next to an equals sign indicating that the symbol next to it represented him in the algorithm.

He really should have seen this coming. By avoiding all of Charlie's questions and inquiries on the topic, he'd forced his little brother to fall back on the one thing that had almost always allowed him to solve any problem that stood in his way. He wasn't sure what to think of this, though. On the one hand, it annoyed him that Charlie simply couldn't leave the topic alone, couldn't respect his wishes on the matter, but strangely enough, on the other hand, he was also touched. To know that Charlie cared that much that he'd put in the time and effort to try and solve his questions was flattering.

"Hey, Chuck," Don called out loudly, hoping to catch his attention.

Charlie's music, however, was too loud for him to hear the call, so Don angled his approach so his little brother would see him coming. He didn't want to startle him as he'd inadvertently done so often in the past. The problem was, Charlie tended to get so absorbed in his work that he completely lost track of his surroundings and there was no safe way to catch his attention. Well, other than to wait him out, which he really didn't want to do. He'd seen Charlie go at it for hours on end before, not stopping for anything.

"Sorry," Don apologized as Charlie jumped back with a cry as he waved his hand in front of his little brother's face.

"Don! You startled me," Charlie stated, pulling his headphones off and glaring at his brother.

"Hey, I tried to warn you, but you couldn't hear me. You really shouldn't put the music up so loud."

"It helps me concentrate."

"Yeah, whatever," Don replied.

They'd often disagreed on the subject as he couldn't see how the earsplitting noise could possibly be conducive to thinking.

"Did you want something? I'm not done with the expressions for the CalMo case yet."

"Actually, I came by to give you some more data," Don explained, handing over the file he held. "Nikki found some old tax records they kept stored and thought it might help you."

"Yes, that should allow me to narrow things down significantly." Charlie stated as he opened the file and flipped through the pages. "This will be a big help."

"Good," Don responded, stepping past his brother towards the board that had captured his attention earlier. "So, you wanna explain this to me?"

"Huh? What?" Charlie asked, so focused on the data that he'd lost track of his brother's movements, but he flushed as he looked up and saw what Don was pointing at. "Ah, see, well..."

"This is about two Fridays ago, isn't it?"

"You wouldn't tell me anything," Charlie defended, his chin rising stubbornly.

"It was nothing, really."

"I don't think so. He wanted to buy you a beer- he was _flirting_ with you!"

"Yeah, so? It happens."

"I didn't know. You never said anything."

"Why would I? You didn't tell me every time someone flirted with you back then."

"That's different, they were girls."

"That hardly makes a difference," Don countered, raising a finger as Charlie opened his mouth. "And you were in Princeton, we weren't exactly communicating a lot."

"So it happened at college?"

Don sighed and glanced at his watch. Why not? He'd already told Dad, so it was bound to get back to Charlie at some point. Besides, if he refused to answer, his little brother was going to keep digging and sooner or later he might find something. He'd pulled stranger rabbits out of his mathematical hat after all.

"Yes, at a frat party."

"The second?"

"Shortly after I joined the Stockton Rangers, he was one of the relief pitchers."

"The thi-"

"Charlie, no, I am not going to list them all."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not."

"But I need more data."

"More data," Don repeated in disbelief. "Charlie, what's really fascinating you so much about this?"

"They're guys, men, not women."

"And what does that mean, exactly? 'Cause I know you're not homophobic."

"No! No, I didn't mean it like that. Just... just- I didn't see it coming."

"How could you have? It's not something you could have predicted. You were working off what you knew about me. This has nothing to do with me, well not in that sense anyway. This is all about people that you weren't looking at. It's like..." Don couldn't believe that he was actually searching for a mathematical way to explain the situation, he was spending far too much time around Charlie and his friends. "Having the data on a computer program and then being surprised you didn't see a particular request from a user coming." And had he really just compared himself to a piece of software? "It's an outside influence on the system you were studying."

Apparently Charlie couldn't believe the analogy he'd just made either, if his astonished expression was anything to go by. Well, either that or Don had just made a complete fool of himself by hopelessly botching his analogy. It hadn't sounded _that_ bad, had it?

"You're right, I was neglecting to see it as the result of an external force acting on the dataset I had."

"Yeah, exactly," Don replied, brow furrowing slightly.

"Although, I should perhaps have had an inkling of the possibility," Charlie continued, a very familiar smile appearing on his face and Don's eyes narrowed automatically in response.

He _knew_ that smile. It was the one his little brother always got when he started teasing him about something or other. He was not going to like whatever was coming, that much was guaranteed.

"Do you want to know why?"

"No, not particularly," Don stated, not having the slightest intention of walking into his brother's trap.

"Well, I simply mean, things are rarely completely isolated. There's generally a cause and an effect, or not so much a cause as a factor upon which the external influence acts. To use your analogy," Charlie said with an ironic little gesture in his direction, "the user had a particular reason to make the request they did. It may not have been anticipated by the programmer, but there generally had to be something about the program that caused the user to think their request was compatible with the software. I mean you wouldn't ask Word to do complex calculations after all."

"Depends on the user."

"In your case, though, I think I may know what that factor is," Charlie continued, completely ignoring his comment, the smile only growing as a triumphant expression crossed his face. "Your looks."

"My looks?" Don repeated, scrambling to see where he was going with this.

"Yeah, your prettiness."

The words and teasing tone took a second to penetrate, but when they did, Don's eyes narrowed once more and he lunged forwards. Having expected the response, Charlie tried to dart away, but he underestimated his big brother's speed and Don managed to grab a handful of his outer shirt and prevent his escape. Using the leverage and his superior strength, Don dragged him closer, expertly pinning him against the side of the blackboard with his own body.

"No, Don, be careful of my work!" Charlie protested as he tried to twist himself free without rubbing any of his work off the board.

"Then don't move," Don replied, having been careful to pin him against a blank area, if he moved too much to the left, however...

"Come on, Don!" Charlie whined as Don reached down to the bottom of the board where he normally placed his chalk.

Don completely ignored his little brother as he ran his fingers in the accumulated chalk dust before bringing them up and rubbing them into Charlie's curls despite his vocal protests. When Charlie gave up trying to free himself and ran his own fingers through the chalk dust in order to retaliate, Don grabbed his wrist and tried to bring them to Charlie's own face instead. They struggled for a bit, mock fighting and getting the chalk dust everywhere.

When they finally broke apart, Charlie was proud to see a few streaks of white on his brother's clothes along with one that started in his dark hair and ran passed his ear and onto his right cheek. He knew it was nothing compared to the dust that he was sure he was covered in himself, but at least he'd gotten a few shots in, which was far better than when they'd wrestled as kids.

"You know, it never does work," Charlie finally stated as he gave up trying to wipe the chalk dust off of his layered shirts.

"What?"

"Using expressions and algorithms," Charlie explained with a vague wave at the board that had triggered the whole conversation in the first place. It frustrated him to no end most of the time. Given all of the information he had available on his brother, he should have little trouble making it work, but he couldn't. This current issue was merely another example of that. He'd worked on this for so very long and yet he hadn't seen it coming. There hadn't even been a hint of a clue and it had caught him completely off-guard. "Not when it comes to you."

"Really?" Don questioned with a smile, intrigued and slightly smug.

"Nope. There seem to be too many variables involved, especially ones that are either unpredictable or which I'm simply lacking data on."

"I can live with that," Don stated, throwing an arm over his brother's shoulder, completely ignoring his frustrated frown.

"It's not funny," Charlie said indignantly. "It _should_ work, but it never does."

"That's 'cause I'm doing my job."

"And what's that? Annoying your little brother?"

"Sure, and keeping you on your toes," Don declared as he flexed his arm, pulling Charlie close and messing his hair with his free hand.

"Hey!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June 2009


End file.
